


The Sparrow and the Titans

by CyclonicJet



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 09:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15555222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyclonicJet/pseuds/CyclonicJet





	The Sparrow and the Titans

The stone cracked and leapt around her. Chips of ice sailed away as the rock beneath surged upward to meet her feet. The mountain pass had no other choice but to grant her passage, for never before had it encountered a stone weaver. Taliyah has spent weeks now amongst the frigid peaks and frozen tundras, but was yet no closer to finding a way home. All her travels in Freljord had achieved thus far was teaching her what being cold truly meant.

Beyond that however she was becoming frustrated, the tales and rumours of what was happening in Shurima played on her mind constantly. She had to get home, to protect her people, her family. Suddenly she sensed something, vibrations in the stone that were not her own shook the ground. The earth suddenly began to tremble beneath her and the stream of weaved stone she had raised ahead of her became disjointed and promptly crumbled apart.

She stumbled and soon found herself gliding through the air as the stone broke apart completely beneath her. She crashed down face first into the snow. The earth continued to shake as she moved to get back up, it was trembling so fiercely it was hard for her to maintain her footing. Was this an earthquake? Focusing her power she stabilised the ground in a small circle around her, a small island of calm stone amongst a sea of trembling rocks.

She gazed around and saw nothing. Then the side of the mountain above her exploded outwards in a cataclysmic explosion, sending boulders the size of carts or bigger, hurtling down towards her. She yelped and started running. The stone could sense her panic and burst upward to aid her in her flight. As the boulders closed in on top of her she reached deep inside herself, and crossing her arms ahead of her, she made a powerful slicing move. She stretched her arms out as far as they would go to either side of her. "YAHHH!" she yelled causing the boulders all to split cleanly in two, which then fell harmlessly around her instead.

The source of the earthquake now became apparent as she witnessed what appeared to be a colossal red ram and a gigantic polar bear rolling down the side of the mountain ahead of her. They were both completely locked in the others embrace, each vying for for dominance over the other. She was awed and terrified at the same time, she may as well have been an ant compared to these titans.

She moved to weave her way up the mountain and away from the valley below, attempting to avoid the place where the tussling giants had landed. A mighty bellow abruptly echoed out across the canyon and the ground started to shake again But this time she was ready for it. She adjusted her footing and the stone to keep her weave true. However then something she had never encountered before happened, the rock started to melt.

It began turning slightly sticky, but more urgently also began to burn the soles of her feet forcing her to jump back into the snow. She immediately noticed little pools of water were flowing through it as it was heated from underneath. She had to get out of here or she'd be cooked alive. Far below her now the two tussling colossi continued to fight, the valley floor itself was now awash in boiling red magma. The polar bear roared its fury at this and struck out at the ram with its claws, each strike rang out like thunder causing the mountain to shake even more. Sparks of lightning also started to coarse around the brawlers as there struggle continued.

If she hadn't been in terrible danger Taliyah would have thought she was lucky to bear witness to such an epic duel. The steams surrounding her were fast becoming veritable rivers. She started to slip down the mountain side as it became slick with running water. She spied a perilous edge at the base of the slope she was on, it looked like it led to a sheer drop to the gorge below. She had no other choice now but to try and weave to save herself, molten rock or not. Summoning the stone again, a row of red hot rocks spiked out ahead of her. Acting like bars she slid on top of them and started to shift from foot to foot trying not to injure them to badly.

The ground shook violently again as a flash of lightning blazed up from the canyon. Her short trip down the side of the mountain had hidden them from her sight, but it was impossible not to still hear them. A cold wind suddenly picked up at her back and a flurry of snow started to fall from the sky above. The stones beneath her stopped being hot and instead started to cool down, chilling way down past what they would have been usually. The sound of gargantuan flapping wings and the angry screech of a great bird rang loudly throughout the mountain.

The light flurry quickly evolved into a blizzard and through the densely falling snow Taliyah glimpsed the silhouette of the giant bird soaring down into the valley. It almost looked like it was made of ice, but that might have just been a trick of her eye. As the bird entered the fray the noise and tremors intensified to a fevered pitch. It was so loud her ears began to ring from the ensuing clamour. She covered them with her hands but the sound was resonating through her body from the ground below, she could not escape it.

She again focused hard, trying to still the rock spear she stood upon, to quell the violent vibrations within it. But between the din of the mighty clashes, the biting cold wind, and the constant juddering she found it hard to focus. Her concentration slipped and for a split second she lost control of her power, enough time to overextend on the force she had intended to use. The rock spear snapped clean away from the ground below and started tumbling down towards the precipice, taking Taliyah along with it.

She tried to call upon the stone once more, but before it could respond she plummeted over the edge and straight into a sheer drop. To her left she could now clearly see the clashing titans, a storm of molten rock, ice and wind, and lightning and thunder clashed inside the deep valley. Directly below her were jagged ice spears jutting from the ground, they must have been the trickling water that had gone over the edge, snapped frozen into jagged barbs. She had to do something. Fast. She focused inside herself willing the stone of the cliff face to rise and catch her. "Come on. Come on." she said to herself.

The stone responded by cracking open the cliff and extending a thick sheet of rock to her feet. She turned her focus to tilting it upwards, lifting more stone beneath it to arc over the top of the icicles. More and more rock rose until at last she had enough distance to jump forwards, taking only the top layer of stone with her as a snowboard. She sailed over the icicles and before she even landed, started a new weave to carry her forward further. Her momentum could not be stopped so she had no choice but to ride it all the way through, straight into the maw of the raging battle.

The wind swept around her with a force she had never felt before, it almost threatened to sweep her off her perch. If her feet had not been so firmly planted to her weave it may well have done so. The titans loomed large before her, the bird had perched itself atop the rams horns and was pecking hard down at the polar bear. The bear was striking hard and fast at the ram. The ram for its part was landing mighty blows of its hammer against the bear.

An almighty roar of anger escaped the bear causing lightning to streak all around. Taliyah yelped and began to dodge as fast as she could, weaving too and fro through the tempest of bolts. Suddenly the ram's hammer slipped from its grasp and fell to the ground directly ahead of Taliyah forcing her to dance aside swiftly, straight towards the bear. The ground shook heavily as the ram itself also slammed into the ground. A mighty war cry escaped the bear and was met with a mighty screech from the bird as it took wing.

Taliyah was directly in the midst of the battle now as the bird rose high above and then dove, striking the bear hard and pinning it to the ground with another earth shattering blow. She was to close now to adapt her weave in time, and against such a mighty tremor the weave shattered apart completely beneath her. She landed hard into the snow as it trembled around her, she tried to rise to her feet but couldn't even get off her knees. She was trapped in the worst possible place, it was only a matter of time till she was crushed beneath them.

She watched the ram struggle back to its feet. It bellowed mightily and spoke in tongues foreign and strange to Taliyah, but clearly imbued with great power for the very air shook at there utterance. It charged forward and slammed into both the bear and bird, forcing them into the opposing the cliff face, which cracked all the way to the precipice above with the force of the impact. That gave Taliyah an idea.

The bear and bird again roared there fury and turned on the ram in union, clawing and scratching at it. But it held it's position firm, wailing down upon them with its hammer. Taliyah had one chance to escape this, she needed to silence the ground long enough to flee, but to do that she needed to make it shake more then even the Titans had managed to make it.

She turned and faced the cliff face, holding her arms out before her she began pulling forward on the stone buried deep beneath its surface, calling it towards her. The cracks started to widen, more and more of them sprung up on the cliff face as it began to splinter apart. The cliff shuddered with the building energy, it mirrored Taliyah who was also visibly shaking with the effort. If the stone had not already been so badly beaten up by the battle this would never have worked and she knew it. The three titans continued there struggle seemingly oblivious to what was about to happen. Then in an instant the side of the cliff collapsed entirely, dropping an uncountable number of tons of rock on top of the duelling giants.

The three of them attempted to disentangle themselves, but to no avail as the cavalcade of stone struck home, burying them all beneath the weight of the mountain itself. Taliyah wasted no time and used the opportunity to leap up and forwards, summoning a new weave to flee the inevitable wrath of the titans.

* * *

She had managed to reach a neighbouring gorge before the distant rumbles of battle started once again. She wove her way up a new mountain path until she could just about see the previous gorge in the far distance. The clash of lightning and molten stone continued to fly but the bird had departed, she could just about make out its silhouette in the far distance, limping away with a seemingly broken wing towards the north.

She breathed heavily and sighed. "I think that's quite enough excitement for me." The Freljord had shown her quite enough for one life time, she would tarry here no longer. She would leave the land of duelling titans and bitter cold to its own machinations. Whatever lessons she should have learnt here, had failed to be imparted to her. It was time to head south once again. It was time to return to Shurima.


End file.
